How to build Rand Fishkin's Web Metrics Dashboard

Nikta Kanuka

We’ve been working on something very special for the last little bit… It’s called the Web Metrics Dashboard, and it’s based off of Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday video. In that video, Rand issued a challenge to marketers to create a better metrics dashboard. True to form, Rand provides very detailed instructions and guidance for building that dashboard.

We were hooked.

The first thought we had about the dashboard is that it’d be incredibly useful for virtually every type of marketer to track. The second thought was that we should build it.

The third thought was that we should make it available to everyone, and make it really easy to set up. So, that’s what we did!

Building the Web Metrics Dashboard

The Web Metrics Dashboard is made up 4 key metrics that roughly map to each area of the traditional marketing funnel: Awareness, First Visit, Returning Visits, and Conversion. Each one of these metrics has been fine-tuned to meet the specifications Rand provides in his video. Check out this very in-depth explainer doc to learn more.

Here’s how you can add each of these metrics to your dashboard along with a brief explanation of the metric.

Awareness Metric

How are people hearing about your brand? This metric measures your monthly performance on social media and for branded searches.

First Visit Metric

How are people finding your website and how engaged are they on their first visit? This metric tracks where visitors come from (for example: organic search traffic, social media, email, etc) and how engaged they are with your website based on either time on site or page views per session.